War in the Heavens

Appearing on the podcast Beyond
the Grassy Knoll always provided this writer with a great
opportunity to kick around the hypothetical peanut. The March 8,
2009 show was certainly no exception. During the course of the
program, the topic of the specter of global war raised its ugly
head. The possible, almost inevitable, endgame scenario is a gloomy
subject to say the least. Still, the fact that the final
competition between the world's power elite may be manifested as a
worldwide conflict is something that show host Vyzygoth felt needed
to be addressed. Cutting directly to the chase, Vyz asked when we
believed the first blows in the title fight should be expected. In
response, this writer told Vyz and the Knoll audience that a world
war would not be possible until nations could produce troop surges
that would put a million boots on the ground. Demographic bleed and
a considerable drop in replacement births, courtesy of the power
elite's depopulation efforts, limits present war-making
capabilities and guarantees that such a conflict will be delayed
for several years. Vyz accepted this assessment of the situation
and moved on to the next part of the show.

There is, however, other war preparations that may have to be
made that only came to this writer's mind after the show was over.
Those preparations would not take place on the earth, but above it.
For enthusiasts of space travel and man's attempts to conquer
gravity, space is considered the final frontier. But for the
military establishments of the world's most powerful nations, space
has become the final battleground.

The concept of space weapons may have found its beginning in the
most unlikely of places: late 19th century science fiction stories.
These early literary fantasies imagined a super weapon with
destructive force that beggared description. The super weapon came
in many shapes and sizes and quickly shed its terrestrial chains
within the pages of science fiction novels.

In 1889, Frank Stockton introduced the concept of the super
weapon in his novel The Great War Syndicate. In this
science fiction novel, which first appeared as a serial in the
popular Collier’s Weekly, a war between America and
Britain prompts 23 extremely wealthy super-capitalists to form a
syndicate committed to defeating the British foes and reaping
tremendous profits in the process (Franklin 152). Once assembled,
the Great War Syndicate builds the “Motor Bomb,” a
weapon that almost mirrors the atomic bomb (152).

A mere demonstration of the Motor Bomb convinces the British to
cease all hostilities and an alliance between England and America
follows (152). This alliance leads to the transformation of the
story’s elite cabal into the “Anglo-American Syndicate
of War” (152). Under the benevolent rule of the Syndicate,
the world goes on to bear eerie resemblance to the imperialist
vision of John Ruskin and his disciple, consummate elitist Cecil
Rhodes. English becomes the universal language and the rest of the
world is civilized by the Anglo-American alliance (152).

Apparently, Stockton’s concept of a great war syndicate
gained imaginative momentum with the power elite. The syndicate
gradually migrated from the pages of fiction to reality as an
intricate relationship formed between elites, government, and the
technocrats of the military-industrial complex. According H. Bruce
Franklin, super weapons that were “conceived in American
science fiction” went on to be “delivered by what has
come to be known as the American military-industrial complex”
(151). As science fiction began presenting the super weapon as a
space-based death machine, the military-industrial complex turned
its gaze towards the stars.

In 1898, the super weapon conquered gravity in
Edison’s Conquest of Mars, a sequel to H.G.
Wells’ War of the Worlds written by Garrett P.
Serviss. In the novel, Thomas Alva Edison is presented as a
technocratic messiah who must devise a way to defeat the Martian
villains introduced in Wells’ classic. Recovering from the
defeat that they suffered at the end of War of the World, the
Martians are preparing for a second invasion of Earth (154). In a
move that would bring a grin to the neoconservative’s face,
Edison creates a space super weapon in preparation for a preemptive
strike. Serviss elaborates:

Edison now discovers an electrical force that can overcome
gravity, and uses it to design and build a space ship. Faster and
more maneuverable than the Martian space vehicles, Edison’s
ship in one quick jump leapfrogs the aeons of Martian science and
technology. Not content with this single-handed feat, Edison also
invents (again all by himself) a weapon more potent than the deadly
heat beam used by the Martians – a disintegrator beam capable
at vast distances of reducing any substance into its constituent
atoms. (154)

What ensues is a campaign of genocide against an alien race as
an interplanetary war fleet armed with destructive super weapons
devastates Mars (156). Serviss’ story is “an
effervescent advertisement for imperial aspirations, superweapons,
and warfare of extermination” (153). Edison’s
Conquest of Mars contributed to the historical tide of
imperialism was gripping America at the time of its release (156).
Two months after the final installment of Serviss’ science
fiction novel, the imperial competition between the United States
and Spain for territory in the Caribbean and Pacific began (156).
Serviss’ tale and subsequent science fiction works inspired
attempts to develop modern space super weapons.

The militarization of space did not stay confined to the realm
of literature for very long. For Richard C. Cook, former lead
Resource Analyst for NASA's Comptroller's Office, the
transformation of the heavens into a warzone is a reality. It was
experience, not the imagination of fiction writers, that taught
Cook this lesson and motivated this writer to interview him on
March 6, 2009.

Cook arrived in Washington shortly after his college graduation
in 1970 under a special program for highly qualified recruits
(Cook, no pagination). He went to work for the U.S. Civil Service
Commission and then went on to work for the Food and Drug
Administration (ibid). From there, Cook moved on to the Jimmy
Carter White House, working for the Special Assistant for Consumer
Affairs, Esther Peterson (ibid). Cook left government for a short
time and then returned in July of 1985 when he arrived at NASA's
Comptroller's Office (ibid). In order to fully understanding the
costing and pricing of all things pertaining to the Shuttle, Cook
set to work learning about the hardware (ibid). It was this job and
Cook’s experience with the Challenger disaster that would
lead to the Research Analyst’s discovery concerning the ugly
truth about the militarization of space.

When reports started to come into the Comptroller's Office
concerning problems with the O-Rings, Cook was sent over to the
Office of Space Flight, the branch responsible for launching the
Shuttle, to determine what was wrong (ibid). It was at this time
that engineers began painting a disturbing and potentially
disastrous picture.

"As soon as I got there I began to be briefed by the engineers
in the Office of Space Flight who were very concerned that the
problems they were having with the O-Rings and the Solid Rocket
Boosters were dangerous and could lead to a catastrophe with the
Space Shuttle," recalled Cook (ibid).

The reports deeply concerned Cook, and he quickly learned that
he was not alone in his fears. His memos, which were revealed to
the public after the Challenger disaster, "gave a pretty graphic
illustration of the fact that people in the system were aware of
this" (ibid). The Resource Analyst joined a growing number of
voices at NASA warning about flaws in the Shuttle hardware
(ibid).

"There were a lot of people in the NASA bureaucracy," explained
Cook. "including engineers at headquarters, engineers at Commercial
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the engineers with
the Solid Rocket Booster contractor, "Morton Thiokol, out in Utah,
who all knew that the O-Rings were extremely hazardous and that
they had a potential for causing a catastrophe." (ibid)

Cook extensively documented the problems with the O-Rings and
passed his reports up the chain at the Comptroller's Office, hoping
that his warnings would be heeded and tragedy would be averted
(ibid). But his reports were ignored (ibid). NASA’s inaction
proved to be fatal on January 28, 1986 when the Challenger exploded
shortly after launch. According to Cook, NASA pressed forward
despite the warnings because the Shuttle program embodied the lofty
ambitions of power and influential people in the government, the
military, and the private sector.

“NASA had a tremendous investment of prestige, of money,
of national security in the Space Shuttle program,” explained
Cook, “because it was being portrayed as the exclusive launch
system for all requirements that the United States had for space
flight. Everything was going to be put on the Shuttle, from
national security missions to satellite launches to commercial
launches to economic-related experiments to getting ready to put up
a space station. I mean, they put everything they had into the
Space Shuttle, and so there was tremendous pressure to keep the
schedule going and to keep the Space Shuttle flying. NASA had never
disclosed to anyone outside, including Congress, the White House,
the press, and in some cases even the military and in other cases
even their own astronauts, how many there were with the Space
Shuttle at that time. So there was a big cover-up going on.”
(ibid)

Of course, the Reagan Administration had been applying pressure
on NASA to meet deadlines in spite of the extreme risk. Cook says
that the launching of the first teacher in space, Christa
McAuliffe, was to serve as a political backdrop for Reagan’s
State of the Union speech (ibid). The Roger’s Commission,
according to Cook, was designed to protect the Reagan
Administration by keeping the investigation into the Challenger
disaster away from the White House (ibid).

“They did a good job of looking at the physical
cause,” said Cook. “But it’s quite clear, when
you go through all of the transcripts and the whole history of the
Commission, that they were very careful to keep anything coming out
that would point to the White House as having been part of the
launch decision or of having pressured NASA in any way to launch.
And I had found plenty of indications that they had been part of
the launch decision and that there was pressure from the White
House to launch.” (ibid)

There was, however, an even more sinister reason for the
cover-up. That reason unveiled the agenda to militarize space.
According to Cook, the O-Ring flaws were also ignored because of a
desire to use the Shuttle to carry U.S. Air Force military payload
(ibid). Replacing the O-Rings may have delayed that plan
(ibid).

“The militarization had a lot to do with it,” said
Cook. “In fact, the Thiokol engineers who were concerned
about cold temperatures had raised that issue a year before the
Challenger disaster. And they were told, essentially, that they
were to keep that information to themselves because NASA did not
want to interfere with military flights.” (ibid)

So the saber-rattlers won the day and the Shuttle launched
without delay, resulting in the tragic consequences of January 26,
1986. Little was mentioned in the mainstream press about how the
Challenger crew had been sacrificed, in part, to satisfy a military
agenda. Cook feels that NASA’s original mission was placed on
the war-mongers’ altar as well. Anyone who cared to
investigate the issue would have found that the Challenger disaster
was the tip of the iceberg. The Space Shuttle was to become the
testing platform for Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI), also known as the Star Wars program (ibid). Cook sees the
use of the Shuttle for the Star Wars program as contradictory to
the legislation establishing a civilian space program for peaceful
purposes (ibid).

“I felt that it was a perversion of NASA’s
mission,” said Cook, “and probably illegal if anyone
really wanted to give a hard look to the National Aeronautics and
Space Act of 1958.” (ibid)

Cook’s own observations since leaving NASA have led him to
conclude that the space militarization agenda has continued on to
the present day. The agenda saw a temporary setback during the
Clinton Administration when use of the Shuttle for military
missions was discontinued (ibid). But the George W. Administration
saw the return of militarization efforts. This time, according to
Cook, the effort is being carried out under the pretext of
colonizing the moon (ibid).

“They say it’s to prepare for a Mars mission,”
said Cook. “But I have spoken to someone who has worked in
NASA and who is very cognizant of what’s really going on. The
real, underlying purposes of the current program to colonize the
moon is a military mission. Essentially, it’s to provide a
base, a military base on the moon to control access to space. And
there’s now a space race among nations of the world to get
their own colonies established on the moon. Russia, China, the
European Space Agency, and India are all participating now in this
new race to the moon that I think has very strong militaristic
overtones.” (ibid)

Control of the moon would certainly help reestablish the
American Empire’s waning dominance. The moon possesses as a
subsoil asset an isotope known as helium-3 (Blomfield). The
non-radioactive isotope is, according to journalist Adrian
Blomfield, a “proven and potent fuel for nuclear
fusion” (ibid). Britain’s energy requirements for an
entire year could be met with just six metric tons of helium-3
(ibid).

In 2006, NASA announced its intentions to construct and staff an
international base camp on one of the moon’s poles by 2024
(ibid). Strangely, the United States declined an offer to take
Russia’s Federal Space Agency Roscosmos on as a partner in
the moon base project (ibid). The move prompted Russian suspicions
that Washington was using lunar exploration as a pretext for
monopolizing helium-3 mining (ibid).

If America were able to corner the energy market by monopolizing
helium-3 mining, then the Western power elite would become the
dominant force in the emerging new world order. The Russian elite
cannot and will not allow that to happen. As this writer has
pointed out before, there is no award for second place in the race
for world domination. For this reason, Russia is now hard at work
on a program to reach the moon nine years before America,
establishing a permanent lunar base by 2015 (ibid).

There was a time when space exploration was a testament to the
spirit of innovation. Unfortunately, that time seems to have
passed. Now, reaching the stars is about the acquisition of power
and, ultimately, power is the key to winning the unfolding war in
the heavens.

Sources Cited

Franklin, H. Bruce. “Eternally safe for democracy: the
final solution of American science fiction.” Science Fiction, Social Conflict, and War.
Philip John Davies, ed., New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990,
151-68.

About the author

Paul D. Collins has studied suppressed history and the shadowy
undercurrents of world political dynamics for roughly eleven years. In
1999, he earned his Associate of Arts and Science degree. In 2006, he
completed his bachelor's degree with a major in liberal studies and a
minor political science. Paul has authored another book entitled
The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social
Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11. Published in
November 2002, the book is available online from www.1stbooks.com, barnesandnoble.com,
and also amazon.com. It can be purchased as an e-book (ISBN
1-4033-6798-1) or in paperback format (ISBN 1-4033-6799-X). Paul also
co-authored The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship
(ISBN 1-4196-3932-3).

The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship is available
here. Read a comprehensive collection of Collins essays here.